File:RECEPTION ROOM (ORIGINAL USE AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN) - Salt Lake City Hall, 300 North State Street, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, UT HABS UTAH,18-SALCI,24-4.tif

• Significance: Constructed between 1864 and 1866 are Salt Lake City's government headquarters, Salt Lake City Hall was one of the earliest buildings to house the City's public officials and municipal functions.

Since the building also served as the Utah Territorial Capitol where both the federally appointed Territorial Governor and the Mormon-dominated legislature met until 1894, much of the struggle for political control of Utah took place the 60-foot-square, two-story red sandstone building. The building documents what historian Howard Roberts Lamar aptly describes as "the most turbulent and unusual experience in the history of the American Territorial system," referring to the forty years of Mormon-Gentile political conflict which preceded Utah's statehood in 1896. According to historian Eugene E. Campbell, "Polygamy and theocratic domination of the civil government led to serious confrontation with federally appointed territorial officials and were primary reasons that Utah's statehood applications were denied for over forty years. Friction began when the first territorial appointees arrived in Utah in 1851, and it reached a climax in 1857 when U.S. President James Buchanan felt obliged to send an army of 2,500 men to install a non-Mormon governor and to quell a reported Mormon rebellion against the government." After several more decades of struggling with accommodation to secular, political, economic, and social pressures, Utah became the 45th American State in 1896.

• Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-38
• Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N893
• Survey number: HABS UT-74
• Building/structure dates: 1866 Initial Construction